Originally posted by KillerBug:

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You can get away with lazy coding on Apple devices...only a few resolutions, only a few processors. This is why so many old iOS apps don't work right on the iPhone5...they never thought to include functions to adjust for screen size. Almost like a modern Y2K bug. Most of the apps that have been fixed just added the new resolution...so it will happen again when Apple changes the resolution again. You can't do that on Android...not even for a little while. An Android app needs to support dozens of resolutions right from the start.

I've heard more than a few devs complaining that Apple was brazen enough to put a slightly larger screen into the new iPhone and break their apps in the process...it is kinda sickening when I think of all the Android and PC software I have that all work with whatever resolution or aspect ratio I may choose.

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I'm guessing your self-developed application count is a nice round ZERO?!?

Never thought to include functions to adjust for screen size... seriously?

You don't need functions to cater for screen size. With vector art assets, you can have a fully scaleable project, with a single variable controlling it. I have a flash game that uses the same code to drive the game in whatever resolutions I choose... it's not even complex. At the most basic level, you could simply write to a fixed size rendertarget, and scale that during screen output. Most API's have image scaling functions, and that's all you need.

Do you think the PC has functions to cater for all the different screen sizes and resolutions?

The reason apps don't work on the iPhone5, is because of lazy programmers who can't write multi-platform apps properly. Hence all those whining devs and their alleged "broken" apps. Set a target resolution based on the current top end handset (i.e. iPhone 4s), get the current resolution (including from new handsets), divide the two, get a scaling factor, and apply that to everything that needs scaling... problem solved.

If you're writing for a mobile platform, then you adopt a multi-device attitude from the off... and that's regardless of iOS or Android. Always work on the basis that devices will improve, and write your code to cater for it. Some of these devs would have run a mile back in the days of J2ME... we used to target over 90 devices, each with firmware variations... for every game.